INVOKING THE CAUSAL POWERS OF PHYSICAL PROPERTIES TO SUPPORT DUALISM Andrew Udvarnoki A primary objective of the philosophy of mind is to develop a practical understanding of the concept of consciousness. Such an understanding should include knowledge about the nature and characteristics of consciousness, and what types of rela- tionships it has to physical bodies and properties. However, comprehending consciousness has proven to be an extremely challenging and highly elusive task. Many of the problems associated with consciousness stem from the inability to recog- nize its origin(s) and the indistinctness of its relational char- acteristics. This indeterminacy is clearly demonstrated by the inconclusiveness of the explanations that have attempted to give a proper account of the basic features of conscious experiences. These conscious, or phenomenal, experiences are characterized by certain feelings and sensations, which give one having such experiences the knowledge and understanding of “what it is like to be” in those particular phenomenal states. David Chalmers, a prominent phenomenalist, explains: “The phenomenal concept of mind…is the concept of mind as conscious experience, and of a mental state as a consciously experienced mental state…On the phenomenal concept, mind is characterized by the way it feels.”1 A major difficulty in explaining the phenomenal concept of mind is that it is unclear whether conscious states, also referred to as the subjective characters of experience, are to be described merely as constituents of the physical world, or if they have some additional transcendent qualities that defy purely physical explanations. The view that seeks to establish the former claim, that the conscious states of mind are in fact part of 1 the physical world, is appropriately termed physicalism. Thus, according to physicalism, the subjective characters of expe- rience are to be defined merely as physical states of the brain (another way of putting this is that conscious or mental states are identical to brain states). The latter view, that there is more to conscious states than can be explained in purely physical terms, is known as dualism. Since things that transcend the physical world are presently indefinable, the primary claim of dualism is that conscious states of the mind are not merely physical states of the brain. The concept of consciousness can be a very compli- cated and technical metaphysical issue, and like most philosoph- ical topics it is highly conceptual and somewhat unsubstantiated; hence, matters pertaining to consciousness have fueled the debate between physicalism and dualism for quite some time. The focus of this paper will be to examine a certain contention that relates to contemporary deliberations in the philosophy of mind. More specifically, it will analyze and assess a particular argument that has been advanced by John Perry in his recent book, Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness. Perry is advocating antecedent physicalism, which is a form of physicalism that is supposed to account for phenomenal states of mind in a purely physical context. Much of his claim rests on showing that some of the more prominent arguments for dualism actually pose no threat to his version of physicalism. One such argument that Perry seeks to refute is the zombie argument, which David Chalmers introduced in his book The Conscious Mind. Perry attempts to show that the zombie argument is actually not an argument for dualism, but rather a test for epiphe- nomenalism, which is a theory concerned with the causal aspects of phenomenal states. Perry concludes that epiphenomenalism is not a theory that supports dualism, and that the zombie argu- ment is really a determinant of epiphenomenalism; therefore, the zombie argument is not an argument for dualism, and poses no threat to antecedent physicalism. 2 Although Perry’s conclusions are based on well-devel- oped and sophisticated ideas, they are not entirely correct, for there is a consideration that Perry seemingly overlooks. It is the fact that properties are sources of causality because properties just are causal powers. This is a basic and sensible claim that has been explicated by Sydney Shoemaker in his paper, “Causality and Properties.” Recognizing the causal powers of properties is extremely important because it undermines one of the basic premises on which Perry’s arguments are founded. The objec- tive of this paper is to demonstrate that epiphenomenalism is in fact an argument for dualism, and this claim will be established by showing that properties are causal powers. At this point, the relevance of the causal powers of properties is probably not evident, but this issue will be clarified shortly, and by the end of this paper it should be clear why Perry’s conclusions are erro- neous. However, before the reasons why Perry’s conclusions turn out to be incorrect are revealed, it would be helpful to get some background information on the argument that he challenges, as well as a general overview of his own argument; this will make it easier to understand and trace Perry’s line of reasoning. Thus, this paper will first provide a brief review of the zombie argu- ment, followed by a synopsis of Perry’s premises and conclu- sions. Then it will explain the causal powers of properties and show how these causal powers undermine Perry’s conclusions about epiphenomenalism and the zombie argument. The Zombie Argument A well-known argument that endorses the dualist account of consciousness is David Chalmers’ zombie argument. In this example, Chalmers seeks to invalidate the physicalist’s claim that conscious states and experiences are only physical states of the brain by maintaining that there exists “the logical possibility of a zombie: someone or something physically identical to me (or to any other conscious being), but lacking conscious experiences 3 altogether” (Chalmers 94). Likewise, zombies live in “a zombie world: a world physically identical to ours, but in which there are no conscious experiences at all” (Chalmers 94). Further, a zombie will also be functionally identical to his/her actual-world counterpart because: he will be processing internal configurations being modified appropriately and with indistinguishable behavior resulting…(and) he will be awake, able to report the contents of his internal states, able to focus attention in various places, and so on. It is just that none of this functioning will be accompanied by any real conscious experience. There will be no phenom- enal feel (Chalmers 95)2. Thus, the only thing differentiating a zombie from his/ her real-world counterpart is that zombies lack the subjective characters of experience that are an essential part of the human experience. The possibility of the existence of beings that are physically indiscernible from humans, but that are completely without conscious experience is supposed to show that the phenomenal states of mind are not identical with any physical states of the brain. If the phenomenal states of mind were equal to certain physical states of the brain, then it would be logically impossible for beings that are physically indiscernible from humans to be without conscious experiences altogether; it would be necessary for zombies to have the subjective characters of experience that humans have. However, since it is logically possible for beings that are physically identical to humans but that lack conscious experiences to exist, it is evident that the phenomenal states of mind are not to be identified with the physical states of the brain. Therefore, there is a duality between phenomenal states and brain states, and the former cannot be explained in terms of the latter (i.e., phenomenal states cannot be explained by physicalism). The zombie argument is one of the arguments against 4 physicalism that Perry considers and challenges. By contem- plating some of the possibilities associated with epiphenome- nalism, he is able to conclude that the zombie argument does not damage physicalism, because under certain circumstances it is possible for the physicalist to accept the existence of zombies. Perry’s Argument In chapter 4 of Knowledge, Possibility, and Conscious- ness Perry examines the zombie argument and determines that it is irrelevant to the debate between physicalism and dualism: “What may be somewhat surprising, though, is that the possi- bility of a Chalmers zombie world really has virtually nothing at all to do with the issue of physicalism versus dualism.”3 Instead, he believes “It is a test for epiphenomenalism versus the efficacy of the conscious” (Perry 77). This is a substantial claim, and to thoroughly assess Perry’s reasoning, the concepts of epiphenom- enalism and the efficacy of the conscious must be completely understood. Epiphenomenalism is a theory that is concerned with the causal aspects of phenomenal states; its primary interest is the cause-and-effect relationship between conscious events and events that occur in the physical world. Perry defines epiphe- nomenalism “simply as the doctrine that conscious events are effects but not causes” (Perry 78). Thus, phenomenal states of mind are affected and shaped by events taking place in the physical world, but they do not influence or impact the outcomes of physical events. In effect, they are results that do not produce further results. This notion can be compared to the occurrence of a shadow that any regular physical object casts when the sun is in an appropriate position to produce such a result. The existence of an object’s shadow is an effect that is created or generated by events in the physical world (the mass of the physical object blocking a portion of the sun’s light). However, the shadow itself does not create or generate any other effects or events in 5 the physical world, it simply exists as it is. According to epiphe- nomenalism, the relationship that the shadow has to the physical world is the same type of relationship that phenomenal experi- ences have to the physical world.